INTERFERENCE

Harmonic Research & Theory

This archive contains years of my research into music theory, harmonic physics and human perception. The views expressed do not necessarily represent my decided opinion about a given topic - only areas of interest that I explored to write my books.

To partition the database on a subject of interest, click on one of the category links below.

The Gibraltar Star

In "The Twin Pillars of Hercules," I discussed how the mountains either side of the Strait of Gibraltar could have symbolized two golden ratios in a musical tone where a standing wave will naturally damp out enharmonic or fractional waves, thus enabling the piggyback formation of harmonics. While it is a musical example, the same physics applies to a vibrating container regardless of whether we're discussing a guitar string, an octave, a circular plate of vibrating sand or even our solar system.

I also suggested that this knowledge was known in ancient times and could have been behind the mythology that a mountain (personified as Atlas) was located at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea and that Hercules cleaved it in half, opening up the Strait of Gibraltar to Atlantis (Atlas = Atlantis = Atlantic). I even suggested that the shape of the two mountains could have been seen as a physical symbol or archetype for the pattern created by harmonics over an octave.

Well, I'm now going to provide more evidence to support my hypothesis.

If you type 'Strait of Gibraltar' into Google Earth, it will take you very close to the Rock of Gibraltar. If you then scroll over and hover your mouse over the tip of this giant rock and look to see the latitude reading at the bottom, you will notice that it reads EXACTLY 36 degrees. Not approximate - exact.

Since there are 180 degrees latitude running north-south from the equator through the north pole and back to the equator, the rock of Gibraltar is located precisely one-tenth of the circumference of the Earth running through the poles. In fact, the entire Mediterranean appears to balanced around this 36 degree latitude, passing through Malta until it reaches a small town in Turkey on the eastern most end of the Mediterranean.

So, what does this have to do with harmonics and damping? The golden ratio is calculated as (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2 and is represented geometrically as the intersections of a 5-pointed pentagram. If you consider the entire Earth as a giant pentagram and Gibraltar (and even the entire Mediterranean Sea) as one of its points, it could be considered at a natural damping proportion between two of the pentagram's other points at 72N (over the north pole) and 36S below the equator. These latitudes happen to correspond respectively to the Bering Strait (between Alaska and Russia) and the southern most point of Africa known as the Cape of Good Hope.

Is this a coincidence or does the Earth resonate harmonically, creating breaks or gaps in the crust exactly at pentagonal proportions centered on the equator? Could the separation of land mass that is the Mediterranean Sea have been carved out by harmonic damping in the resonating sphere of the Earth's interior (like a cymatic pattern) and could the ancients have even known that Gibraltar - the mythological location of Atlas holding up the world - have been a key damping proportion?

It is a well known fact that the ancient Greeks knew the world was a sphere, as many of their statues represent this. The flat-Earth policy was a much later invention of the Roman Church. If the ancients could calculate the circumference of the world and their distance from the equator, they could have known this fact.

One last point - the Grand Canyon and Hoover dam are also located at 36-degree latitude as is Big Sur in California. I could go on, but I think it's clear that harmonic resonance is involved in the Earth's geography and that the ancients might have recorded this in their stories about Gibraltar.